This invention relates to a passenger transport installation or facilities suited for transporting a large number of people between at least two vertically-spaced places, a vehicle for use in such transport installation, and a method of operating such transport installation.
Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication Nos. 59-153773 and 61-188384 disclose typical examples of transport installations for mass-transporting people between at least vertically-spaced two places, in which an elevator device is used, with the interior of the cage or cab is vertically divided into upper and lower cage rooms. Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 58-220068 discloses another type of transport installation in which a self-propelled cage carrying people is moved from one elevator passage to another and then is moved vertically.
In the above elevator device, the passengers get on and off the cage while the cage is stopped in the elevator passage, and therefore the flow of the passengers is not continuous. Particularly where the cage is for mass-transportation purposes and hence has a large passenger capacity, it takes more time for the passengers to get on and off the cage than for the cage to move up or down to a destination place. In this case, even if the speed of movement of the cage is increased, a period of time elapsed from a point of time when passengers get on the cage and to a point of time when they get off the cage at the destination place can not be substantially reduced, and the platform from which people get on and off the cage is always crowded.
Thus, although the above-mentioned conventional techniques are suited for transporting a large number of passengers at a time at high speed, a continuous transportation has not been taken into consideration. Therefore, the ability to transport passengers within a predetermined period of time, that is, the transport capability, has been limited.